1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a voice recognition apparatus, a voice recognition method, and a storage medium. More specifically, the present invention relates to a voice recognition apparatus, a voice recognition method, and a storage medium, which are advantageous when used in a robot having a voice recognition capability.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the art of voice recognition, it is known to determine an acoustic score and a linguistic score in accordance with an acoustic model, a dictionary, and a grammar thereby determining a voice recognition result in the form of a word sequence for an input voice. In robotics, it is known to control the operation of a robot used for FA (factory automation) or the like in accordance with a command signal. It is also known to combine the above-described voice recognition technique and robot control technique to realize a system in which the operation of a robot is controlled in accordance with the result of voice recognition. Such a technique is used in, for example, a goods assorting system to change the destinations of goods using the voice recognition. Furthermore, in recent years, the control of apparatus using voice recognition has become very popular not only in robotics but also in computer systems in which computers are controlled using voice recognition.
Furthermore, besides the industrial robots described above, entertainment robots serving as pet robots (some of them are formed in stuffed shapes) capable of recognizing a speech made of a user and behaving in various manners depending upon the recognition result are available on the market.
It is desirable that entertainment robots grow in a similar manner to actual pets thereby providing greater entertainment to users. For example, it is desirable that a robot do not understand any speech made by a user at first, and the robot gradually become able to understand speeches made by the user as the robot grows. This results in a great improvement in entertainment of the robot.